Day 4078 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Job 21:7 NIV

It’s just unfair

For it seems that this world and how it works is almost a perfect contradiction to so much of what Scripture talks about in regard to God’s design and demand, both built upon and based within what He deserves as opposed to all the more we all so often assume we do. And yet I think that’s at least part of the confection that’s made for this confusion. It’s that we all so love this now ideal delusion in which we’re losing our minds daily to this lie that has us all convinced of the veracity of this sweetest of all ideas:

That both there exist here good people and that, ironically, we’re always among them.

Indeed, I don’t know that I’d have had any way to ever count the number of times I’ve heard in my life someone ask that age-old question: Why do bad things happen to good people? And that because I was both once a kid who didn’t know how to count that high, I also once believed that lie, and, perhaps most honest of all, I just never saw the potential for harm in asking what seemed, and sometimes seems still, such a logical question.

For indeed, it does seem as if there is an at least fairly noticeable distinction, delineation, differentiation to be discovered, defined, described between those who have clearly chosen to contribute to what is the downfall, the dilapidation, the delamination, the very dire and deadly destruction of what was supposed to be a perfect world in every way. After all, God designed it that way. Everything He created was created out of the love that He is and thus He did all He did seeking to, as Genesis puts it, ensure that it was good.

And He himself testified to that every single time that He created something.

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.” So good in fact that He took the next day off! It’s all right there in the very first chapter of the entire Bible!! God created everything to His definition of good, meaning then that He was pleased with it, that it was perfect.

Then we got our hands on it.

Indeed, within just five more chapters we read that “the LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” In fact, it’d gotten so bad that as the very next verse, Genesis 6:6, says “the LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.”

Yep, within six chapters of the very first book of what became a Bible made up of 66 books made themselves of 1,189 total chapters, inside the first six we’d managed to make such a mess of all that He’d made perfect that we took He who was a God who was pleased with all He’d made, calling all of it good and even resting from His work of creating on the seventh day, and brought Him so much sadness, sorrow, anger and dismay that He regretted having made us!

So much so that He then said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

Then the flood came.

After which the rainbow was made to signify His promise to never again destroy all of life that way.

An image we’ve since taken and chosen to use as a symbol for what His Word says is a grievous sin. And that because, as Psalm 10:4 puts it, “in his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.”

Because pride tells us that we’re gods. That we’re the ones who get to determine how things work, what things are, who we are and what that means literally everyone else has to do in regard to our definitions and desires and dedications of ourselves to ourselves alone. For indeed, we have truly become fed and overly happy, and in this we’ve done just as the Scriptures said we would.

We forgot Him.

Even so much as we’ve many times sought to rival Him inside such undertakings as towers built toward Heaven and doubt built within a cross insisted upon He who came to remind us that it didn’t need to be this way that is so sadly still is in which everyone has now been gathered together within that Word which reads that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

And yet we’ve still the audacity to continue advancing this idea that there are good people here and lamenting that bad things happen to them?

In fact, what even are bad things?

How can we know so certainly that something is bad if not for some objective form of that which is good along with a firm understanding thereof? Indeed, is bad something to be defined as differently as we define ourselves, and that anymore by the day? For our world’s chosen to fully embrace this idea of self-identification, a process allowing each of us to determine for ourselves, and that every hour if we so choose, who we are and what others then have to do in regard to our “identity”.

So then are we to be considered as the sources of good or at least the understanding thereof?

What is good?

It’s obviously nothing that’s bad, and so that kind of leads us right back to trying to figure out what bad is. And that, again, asks that we seek for some objective, which means unmoving, unchanging, unchallengeable iteration of something, that we can then trust in and rely on to form for us the basis of our knowledge therein.

So again then, what’s bad?

Granted, there are plenty of things that we would probably all mostly agree aren’t good. Killing someone else for no reason at all seems pretty bad. Then again there are those who identify as serial killers who’ve themselves no such qualms.

Which of us is wrong?

Many would argue that the butchers still are as most things in this world seem to come down to majority opinion, always something of a numbers game. And so yeah, the majority of folks here consider something like murder to be pretty bad.

What about the not so widely agreed upon topics or issues?

What about drugs? Sex? Tattoos?

See, we’ve come up with all sorts of these little, let’s call them ‘topics of debate’, over which we then argue as to what side is right and which then is wrong. And it’s been going this way for as long as people have been here inside both this world but more so this mind that continues to find this idea that we’re good and that means that then anyone who disagrees with us in any way is simply wrong.

Which arrives us back to being the ones who define for ourselves at first, and for the whole world if we had any say in it, what which is good and the rest which is bad.

Even down to apparently judging one another in order to form these factions defined as those who are good as compared against those who are not.

All while applauding this societal ideal in which most here would agree that judging others is wrong.

Even though we have to judge them to determine them to be the good people that bad things happen to. Which also then finds us all judging someone else as a bad person to whom good things happen. And indeed, it does really seem as if these kinds of things are incredibly easy to see.

After all, one of the hardest things for any of us to wrap our minds around is something like childhood cancer. Why do babies have to suffer that way? Or those commercials for the sick, hungry, dying animals. That doesn’t seem fair when they didn’t ask to be here. Or the innocent man being tricked during interrogation and then found guilty and sentenced to prison for what is literally a crime he didn’t commit. Or the single mom who’s just trying to get to work so she can keep food on the table and yet gets pulled over on the way and now has a ticket to pay.

And indeed, it’s seen the other way too.

For true, we have those who are bad to whom good things happen. Like the jerk who gets the promotion at work simply because he’s a better suck up than anyone else could lower themselves to be. Or the guy we see on tv who did something unthinkable and yet got released from jail, on “good behavior”, only to be back on the streets again doing bad things. Or the politician who knows nothing but lies and deceit and never does anything they said they would because they simply wanted the vote but not to help once they had it.

Yes, bad things happen to those to whom it seems undeserved and, yeah, good things happen to those for whom it also seems undeserved.

And so yes, it does seem that so much that happens down here is entirely unfair.

But friends, what is unfairness and how can those without an objective morality dare consider themselves the best to define it?

Remember objective? It’s what we just talked about a bit above. For something to be objective is defined as its being done in a manner “expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations.” In other words, something that’s objective doesn’t have any room for any variables as are always present in a person’s preferences or opinions or perspectives or prerogatives or plans or priorities or promises or promotions or profits or platforms or popularity.

No, for something to be objective means it remains whatever it is regardless of whatever anyone else may say, think or believe.

Such as morality.

Indeed, morality is an understanding built upon the principle of morals which are lessons learned in regard to that which is proper and prudent as are gleaned from a piece of information given them from one who has then the righteous wherewithal to so define that which is right from that which is not.

Kind of like God.

For God is righteous, thus meaning that He is moral, thus proving both the existence of morality and too that He is then the only One who can define it.

And He has.

Problem is that, again, we’ve allowed our pride and ego to convince us that seeing Him as God is a no-go because, well, we thought we were. Because, again, we thought we were right, that we were good, that we never did anything wrong and thus both deserved a life in which everything goes right (in accordance to whatever it is that we alone think right to be) and too have the ability, the authority to determine, and that by ourselves, that which is good from the rest which is not.

All of which comes down to a simple determination as to whether or not something happens that we like, that we agree with, that we can get behind or agrees to get behind us in what have long been lives in which we ourselves assumed the lead and insisted that everyone else follow along.

I refer here back to the blatant bastardization of the rainbow by those who are living in blatant opposition to God’s definition of things.

And indeed, though there may be some who consider that a “dirty” word, a bad one thus, to bastardize something is defined as the process in which someone endeavors “to change something in a way that makes it fail to represent the values and qualities that it is intended to represent”.

For the rainbow is God’s promise that He shall never again destroy the earth, nor those living upon it, with a flood.

Prideful man on the other hand has taken it and insisted it used to represent and glorify those who live in pride as is based upon their courage to be true to themselves and who they think they are as is always defined here by what they think is good.

Even have a month now in which pride is celebrated.

Even though pride is a deadly sin.

But hey, we know what we’re doing, right?

Yeah, such goeth the lie! And, well, sadly pride still proceeds a fall too.

Guess we’ll all find that out, and maybe even soon.

But the problem remains the ‘until then’ part. For until then we’re still here inside this life lived inside this lie that has our minds so confused and angry and sad that we simply don’t really know what to do because, well, yeah, it does seem as if so much that happens here is just unfair. And that’s because, yeah, kids die of cancer whereas drug-users live well into old age. Yeah, people lose their jobs over a simple mistake while others get a promotion and a raise just because they’ve been there longer. Sure, politicians lie and celebrities exist to do the same, and they’ve both so much fame that they’ve all amassed a veritable fortune that allows them to live the kind of life that normal folks don’t even have the ability to dream of anymore.

Yeah, the game is rigged and we’re never the ones who win.

Here.

Because, friends, in case we’ve forgotten, and judging by our strange complacency filled only with unhappiness inside what are lives in which we do more complaining than we ever do changing, the point was never to be for our to find our best life here. It was never for this place here to be the one in which everything worked the way it should and everything always made sense because of it. It was never meant that we seek for our treasure, our success, our victory in this world.

Why?

Because six chapters in and we’d gotten so much so wrong that we made God regret having created us.

We took something so objectively good as love and mercy and grace and compassion, all the ingredients needed for His to have created all of creation, and misused them so badly that He determined that He’d not contend with man forever, as we’re both mortal and that because we’re vastly immoral, but that He would rather limit our lives to 120 years.

Do some folks die much younger than that? Yeah. Do some have a rougher go through those years spent growing old? Yep. Do some find more success, more pleasure, more fame and/or fortune in their lives lived within those 120? Absolutely.

Is it fair?

Truth is that such a thing isn’t for us to say. Granted, to us so many things don’t seem that way. But so much of the time our lives have found us living as if we alone were the sources of the definitions of right and wrong, good and bad. But we’re not. Rather, again, all have sinned and all fall short and all of us have failed, do fail, will fail to honor God and seek only for His glory.

Indeed, contrary to common opinion, there are no good people to whom bad things can happen.

Doesn’t mean that bad things can’t happen as, again, most of can agree that sometimes some things just doesn’t seem to go the way they should.

But friends, that’s because none of us are good.

That’s why the world’s in the shape it’s in. It’s because of our sin. It’s because of such vileness as selfishness and arrogance and vanity and gluttony and greed. It’s because of this wicked seed sewn inside our eyes by the god of this world who seeks still to steal and kill and destroy and that often by convincing us that we’re better than we are and thus deserve more than we have and sometimes need to hurt others in order to get it.

Yes, the god of this age has truly blinded the minds of we who’ve all unbelieved as no, oftentimes we can’t see the goodness of God as we see most days only the wickedness of man. And we’ve all become at times so disillusioned to the deal that we’ve denied there any worth in the walk aimed toward the cross carried by the Christ who dared to say there are none who are good.

Indeed, in Mark 10:18 we read “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.”

Get that?

God alone is good. That means He’s the objective. He’s the foundation. He’s the only in existence who can form for us the basis for our understanding as to what is good and all then that’s not.

But how can He do that when we refuse to see Him as God?

And, look around. Does this seem like a world that lives as if He is God and we are not?

No. No, there’s entirely too much that’s entirely too upside down and messed up and ‘unfair’ in this place for that to be the case. Rather this world is enveloped in this idea that has each of us convinced that we alone are those who have the right, the ability, the authority to define, determine, decide that which we alone then think is good and what all we think isn’t.

But friends, there are none here who are good.

How then can any of us know on our own and by ourselves, in ourselves what good is?

We can’t.

Until we’re emptied of us and all that we’ve convinced ourselves of. That’s why the call to crosses carried. It’s to kill off in us all the lies that we’ve believed, up to and including that most limiting of all, and that’s that these lives could be good, should go well in what is a world that is broken, sick, angry and stuck inside an ancient denial of God.

This place will never again be good because all of us who are not good have had entirely too much say in what this place has become.

No, we need a new hope as there exists here none as there are none who are good, no, not even one.

For He who is good has already left this place to go and prepare us a place in a place that is said to be unlike this one.

That’s why He calls us to store up for ourselves treasures in Heaven. It’s both to give us something toward which to hope and that needed because everything here is torn, tarnished, trying, temporary and trivial.

Even the idea that bad things happen to good people and good things then happen to bad people.

For in the end it won’t really matter however we ourselves set the measure as it’ll be God alone who determines the balance.

This life is just our time to realize that our way knows only to unbalance everything and to see so much that’s so screwed up that we learn to hope in and move toward He who promises to reset everything to the way it should have been.

But how could we get there and find any appreciation for the way things should have been if not for having endured a life spent in a world that’s nothing of what He created it to be?

Indeed, seems we need unfairness friends.

For how better can we learn what fairness is?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold